


Map, Fire, Knife, Key, Mystery

by kerithwyn



Category: Sucker Punch (2011)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-22 13:42:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerithwyn/pseuds/kerithwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>O body swayed to music, O brightening glance/How can we know the dancer from the dance?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Map, Fire, Knife, Key, Mystery

**Author's Note:**

> Written stream-of-consciousness, over a space of four months. (A contradiction, like the movie.)

(Map)

Blondie dances.

She moves in sharp edges, street sass, a tough girl waiting to be tamed. She'll snarl like a tiger, but purr like a kitten under the right hand. Any hand.

They call her Blondie, a swipe at her supposed lack of intelligence, but she knows how best to play the game: oh, mister, anyone else tried to touch me and I'd gut them but you, you tamed me.

Sometimes she wonders if answering to the name doesn't make it so, *wanting* to trust, wanting to be loved.

Impossible here but oh, what does it hurt to pretend?

 

* * *

(Fire)

Amber dances.

She's all welcoming softness, the perfect accommodating concubine. Amber is pretty sure it's some kind of horrible Oriental stereotype but it's what they want, and so.

Amber isn't brave, she doesn't have Blondie's thick skin or Rocket's laughter or SweetPea's certainty to protect her. She borrows confidence from each of them in turn, pretending to strength. It's enough, most of the time, to fight back the constant fear.

Sometimes she wonders how it would feel to be truly courageous, to hold fast against all her terrors.

She would like to know that feeling, before her dance ends.

 

* * *

(Knife)

Rocket dances.

She will never be the most popular of the girls; her dance is too wild, too unrestrained. She presents a challenge rather than submission or obedience. Some of the men like it, and like that she doesn't care either way.

Rocket shuts them out. It's survival, that's all. Do what needs doing and back to the dance, laughing all the while.

Sometimes she wonders what it'd be like to truly *fight,* to take all that feigned ferocity and shake the world to its foundations.

Until then she goes like her namesake, flaming bright against the painted sky.

 

* * *

(Key)

Babydoll dances.

She controls the dance; she *is* the dance. She's the movement at the center of the plot and the momentum for all of its action. The scenery changes as she sets the tone and brings them all along into her world.

Babydoll moves through life like a dream, passing from one set piece to the next.

Sometimes she wonders at her acceptance but deep down she knows: It's not her story. It was never her story.

All she needs is the courage to see it through, to bring the truth in her head from legend into life.

 

* * *

(Mystery)

SweetPea dances.

Home and safe now, she dances in the privacy of her room and nowhere else, for no one else but the four shadows in her mind. Blondie, Amber, Rocket, Babydoll: their names set the tempo, underline the beat.

She dances for herself most of all, for her survival. She's reclaimed her name but it's no longer *her*; she's someone else, now. Someone stronger.

Sometimes she wonders if the sacrifice was worth it, all so that she could gain her freedom.

And she knows: as long as she lives as she wills, they are all of them free.


End file.
